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Air Supplena Island was too old and tarnished to sparkle in the sun, but it still found a way to shine. The white brick of its massive towers reflected light like a hazard vest, almost stinging Jonathan's eyes as he surveyed the buildings with a critical eye. The architecture was old, of course, but not old enough for its likeliness to be in one of his archeology textbooks. The structures were themed towards intimidation and little else. Still, despite the sharp features and death traps, it was beautiful.
He had perched himself on a windowsill in the island's main mansion, looking out towards the courtyard and its hellish spike pit. He could barely make out the bright clothing and flowing headband of Caesar Zeppeli as he hopped gracefully from one spike to another, twirling as he showed off for the small crowd. Muhammad Advol patiently held Jean Pierre Polnareff back from joining the hamon user with a firm hand on the other's shoulder. Kakyoin Noriaki clapped politely a few feet away.
What had really pulled Jonathan's attention from the buildings to the courtyard was the pair of Joestars sitting cross-legged in the shade of the far wall. Higashitaka Josuke sat tense yet willing, hands braced on his knees. Giorno Giovanna held himself with a calm, quiet confidence. The duo shared a brief, yet seemingly serious conversation, and then Giorno summoned his stand.
Even while so far away that the stand looked like a blurry little fleck of gold, Jonathan gazed down at it with the same awe he showed the others of its kind. His hamon was crackling and kinetic, a constant presence, but still it must've been different, having a face to your power. He wondered if a stand user could ever feel lonely.
Giorno fiddled with something in his hands, changing it from grey to green. Jonathan couldn't see much else from so far away. Slowly, Giorno held the green thing out towards Josuke, who cringed away momentarily before jerkily yanking the thing out of his grasp. There was no movement for a while, just panicked laughter from one Joestar and gentle encouragement from the other. And then the green thing leapt onto Josuke's chest.
The responding shriek had such volume that it nearly knocked Caesar off balance from a few meters away. Josuke smacked the thing off of him, recoiled as if the thing had smacked him in return, and then sprinted out of the courtyard with one more distressed yelp. Giorno remained completely unfazed, and simply coaxed the fallen creature back into his grasp.
Jonathan watched Giorno idly pet the thing. To say that there was something strange about the boy was a gross generalization; everyone on Team Joestar was strange in some capacity, and were all the more loved for it. Giorno's oddity, or maybe one of Giorno's oddities, was his strange magnetism towards Jonathan.
It was the soul-deep pull Jonathan felt around his other family members, except amplified by a hundred. He wanted to install himself in Giorno's life, to become as stable and constant as the friends he'd made. It was simply where Jonathan was supposed to be.
The problem was, then, that the only thing he knew about him was his name. Well, that was a bit of a lie. He knew Giorno was Italian, and polite, and so very clever in a way that made Jonathan warm with inexplicable pride. He knew that the other's stand could unwrite reality when pierced with a special arrow, an ability that contrasted perfectly with Dio's powers. That last fact felt significant in ways that Jonathan couldn't describe.
There was also the matter of Giorno not reciprocating the feeling, or at least hiding it for some reason or another. He almost seemed to avoid Jonathan when the team wasn't battling or planning their next move. And as much as Jonathan wanted to get to know him, the hamon user was, above all else, a gentleman. He wouldn't push an unwanted friendship, no matter what the spooky, magnetic, Giorno-centered vibes had to say about it.
Giorno, however, seemed relaxed as he sat there and enjoyed the day. His stand floated lazily behind him, arms wrapped loosely around its user's neck and its legs kicked up behind it. Initiating an unwanted bond was rude, but a brief, single conversation was hopefully safe territory. And Jonathan doesn't know when the other will next be as peacable as he was then.
His instincts told him to jump out the window and simply slide down the mansion's outer wall using traction-based hamon. But once more, he was a gentlemen. He instead took the many, many steps down to the ground floor, casually greeting a few teammates on the way, and walked out onto the courtyard with rapidly failing confidence.
With every step he took towards the boy, a subtle kind of dread started to take hold. Initiating even a brief chat with Giorno felt like combining two different chemicals and not knowing what the intermixing would bring. It felt like kicking up old ghosts, or lifting a bandage and not knowing how much the skin underneath had healed. It was intense in the way that lengthy, important tests were.
And still, he walked.
He carried on until he was practically looming over Giorno and his stand, both of whom stared up at him from over their shoulders. The stand dissipated like golden smoke in a strong wind, and the sudden lack of barrier between the two Joestars had Jonathan's heart beating just a bit faster. Refusing to lose his nerve then, Jonathan cleared his throat and put on his widest, kindest smile.
"Uh, hey there," he said weakly.
Giorno clambered up to his feet, animal companion (a toad, by the looks of it) still in hand, and stared Jonathan down like he was a bug on a card. He was hit with the peculiar sensation of being picked apart. God, did every Italian have a stare that felt like getting dissected like a bug? Or was Jonathan just saddled with all the weird ones? The feeling dissipated in an instant, though, when Giorno replaced the intense gaze with a small grin of his own.
"Hello," he replied, finally. "Jonathan Joestar, yes? The clan patriarch himself?"
Jonathan chuckled a little at that.
"Wow, it's so weird being called that," he admitted.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. In my time, I'm not even married."
Giorno hummed in understanding.
"Ah, but it must be a relief, yes? You already know that you are going to get married, and start a big, prosperous family."
"I guess so," Jonathan agreed. He'd never really thought of it like that, had been more occupied by the bloody end of his respective story.
Giorno's toad let out a lazy little croak, then puffed up the folds of its neck. The lingering tension in the air promptly dropped and shattered on the floor.
"Aww," Jonathan cooed, leaning down to pet and fawn over the toad lovingly. "Are you the little guy who freaked out Josuke?"
Giorno held the toad up.
"Josuke is frightened by reptiles, though he wanted me to help him face his fears," he explained.
"Well, Josuke just doesn't know true beauty when he sees it," Jonathan told the toad.
Giorno nodded enthusiastically, then looked down at it with a vaguely concerned expression.
"I really should turn it back soon. It'll dry out in the sun."
Jonathan looked up at that.
"Is that another thing your stand does? Shapeshift things?"
"Technically," Giorno replied. "Though I can only change a nonliving thing into a living one. Porportionate to size, of course."
"Amazing," Jonathan declared.
Giorno looked away at that, a whisper of a blush across his cheeks. Wordlessly, he summoned his stand and layed its golden hand on the toad, changing it back into a sizeable rock. Jonathan gasped as the toad smoothed over and melted in on itself, turning from brownish green to dull, dusty grey. As easy as breathing yet as grand as a miracle.
"Amazing," Jonathan said once more, breathless.
He looked up at the stand's lidless, shell-like eyes. It stared back as unimpressed as ever, moving only to rest its chin on the crown of its user's head.
"Stands have names, right?" Jonathan asked, gaze not straying from where it locked with the stand's.
"Yes. Mine is Gold Experience."
"It's awfully fond of you."
Giorno looked up at Gold Experience with an almost sad expression, unchanging even as Gold stared back.
"I'd hope so," is all he said.
"Can stands not like their users?" Jonathan asked before he could think better of it.
Giorno hummed flatly at that.
"It depends on how much you and your stand synergize, I suppose. Most stand users don't really order their stands around, in the same way you don't order your heart to beat, or hand to move. Stands and users share a will, in that regard. Stands just act on it in different ways. "
Giorno looked down at the rock in his hands.
"But....I have a friend, Fugo. He is a kind, good person, but he struggles with his own demons. His stand inherited those demons. A deadly thing, for Fugo, because his stand creates a disease that even he isn't immune to. I don't know if the stand hates Fugo, but I do know that Fugo hates his stand."
"And what about you?" Jonathan asked.
Giorno blinked in surprise.
"What about me?"
"Do you like your stand?"
Giorno smiled softly at that, then reached up to gently pat Gold Experience on the cheek. The stand leaned into the contact, nuzzling shamelessly.
"Of course I do," Giorno replied. "They were all I had for a long, long time. I don't think I could have survived what I did without them. It's nice, to have a companion that could never leave you."
He paused for a moment.
"Though, when I use my arrow, they gain total independence. They could wash their hands of me and never return."
"But it never does," Jonathan replied.
Gold Experience wound its arms around Giorno's chest.
"No," Giorno murmured. "It never does."
Giorno shook his head suddenly, then fixed Jonathan with a strange, dazed look.
"I apologise," he said confusedly. "I don't know why I told you all that."
Jonathan gained a little hope from those words. Maybe Giorno did feel the magnetism between them in some way, but was too afraid to act on it. Though it was hard to think of Giorno feeling fear in the first place.
An awkward silence stretched between them that both of them deeply wanted to break, yet couldn't find the words to. Jonathan looked out across the clearing, at Caesar who'd managed to drag Lisa Lisa up onto the spikes with him. She slid across the points whereas Caesar hopped and bobbed, her gait as steady as a paso fino horse. The nigh silent sound of metal jingling drew Jonathan's attention back to Giorno.
The rock had been transmuted into a coiled up snake, its reddish brown scales glittering as it unfurled. It wound its way around Giorno's arm and shoved its face into his armpit. Jonathan backed up a few steps.
"That can bite you, right?" he asked weakly.
Giorno tilted his head slightly.
"I don't see why it would want to. You could bite me as well, but I don't think you will. Hopefully."
He looked over at where Jonathan was once staring.
"Can you do that too? You are trained in hamon, yes?"
Jonathan chuckled nervously.
"Everything I know about hamon I learned in under a month. While on the road."
"Ah," Giorno sighed sympathetically. "That must have been stressful. I learned everything I did about stands within a week."
He gave Jonathan a knowing smirk.
"So maybe I'm not the best person to ask about stands, then, and you are not the best to ask about hamon."
"Yeah, fair enough."
A thought struck Jonathan like an arrow through the brain, and suddenly he felt very, very stupid.
"Hey, uh," he stammered. "Sorry about this, but I forgot how we're related."
The snake-turned-rock hit the ground with a clack, then split in two. Giorno looked down at it, expression that odd mix of neutral blankness and dead intensity that he reserved for battle. Still, his voice retained its same soft, steady cadence.
"I guess no one told you, then," he said.
"Will you?"
Giorno softened at those words, and looked up at him with reluctant uncertainty.
"I suppose that I, out of anyone else, should be the one to tell you," he agreed. "It's rather....personal, so feel free to stop me at any time."
"O-okay."
Giorno took a deep, shaky breath, and began:
"In 1889, you died, and Dio Brando took your body as his own."
That sentence alone made Jonathan's heart beat faster in panic, even if he already knew about his own demise. He'd just never been given an exact date. He began to count the years between his time and 1889, counted how many years he had left with his future wife, friends, career. How long before he abandoned a son he never got to meet. Still, Giorno pressed on.
"Dio remained comatose at the bottom of the sea for many years, and was brought to the surface by treasure hunters in 1983. Two years later, he used your body to impregnate a Japanese woman who was vacationing in Egypt."
Giorno's voice grew thicker, quieter.
"I was the resulting child. Haruno Shiobana."
The first thing Jonathan felt was sticky, full-body disgust. The thought of his body being taken like that, used not only as a tool to harm his descendants but also as breeding stock for Dio's own wants, was....too much. Too much, too soon, though it technically hadn't even happened yet. He wondered, briefly, if it constituted as rape.
"And so, technically," Giorno rambled in a state of mild panic. "Technically, I share some of Dio's genetics, and also yours. Technically, one can say that you're my father."
Tears flowed freely down Jonathan's cheeks. In that moment, he was floating, unanchored, through too many emotions to possibly contain. He unconsciously reached out for Giorno, not noticing how the boy flinched when Jonathan went to frame his face with his big, calloused hands. Jonathan pulled him close, until they were almost nose to nose. And then silently, he searched the boy's face.
Jonathan found the sharpness of Dio's eyes, and the high cut of his cheekbones. He found his thin, arched eyebrows and blonde hair that fell exactly where its owner intended. He found ambition, and grit, and power. He saw emotions held back by practice and an immovable poker face.
And then, unwillingly, Jonathan found his own deep blue eyes staring back at him. Standing across from him was a boy with Jonathan's square chin and strong nose, his too big ears and too bright gaze. He thought back to the instinctually gentle way Giorno handled his creations, from a lazy toad to a venomous snake.
Jonathan smiled wetly. Death and defilement couldn't be that bad, if what he got from it was a son.
"I love you," he whispered. "I wish I could've told you that the moment you were born."
Giorno gave him that stare again, the one that floored people with sheer force of presence. The one that he inherited from Dio. It looked different, now that tears were welling up in his eyes. It looked pained.
Jonathan brushed away the tears when they finally rolled down Giorno's face, and it was only then that Giorno noticed that he was crying in the first place. He touched the moisture coating his cheek, then stared at his hand in distant confusion.
"I haven't cried since I was a baby," he murmured. "I just....I don't cry. I don't. What- why am I-"
Jonathan yanked him into a tight embrace and refused to let go. Giorno's arms flapped about a bit, then just hung limply by his sides.
"Stop it," Giorno pleaded as he sniffled pathetically. "You're making it worse."
He trembled and choked, trying to put a lid on his emotions and failing miserably. Jonathan just guided Giorno's head to rest against his chest, and kissed the top of his head, where Gold Experience had been resting its head mere minutes ago. That was what made the dams break. Giorno wound his skinny arms around Jonathan's broad back and clung for dear life.
"Ah, damn you," Giorno whispered. "You're making me sob like a fool."
They stood there for a solid ten minutes, hugging and crying and driving people away from the courtyard. Reluctantly, they pulled apart. Jonathan settled deep into a post-cathartic haze, relaxed by the emotional release. His son, on the other hand, seemed ragged and disgruntled. He hurried to smooth out the wrinkles in his suit and straighten his ladybug buttons, all with a pinched, flustered expression. It was all very endearing, in Jonathan's humble opinion.
"Ah, so," Giorno began with forced casualness. "I didn't expect this to go so, um, well, all things considering. There's a few things you should know about me, before we move forward in our, uh, relationship."
"Okay, shoot," Jonathan said.
There was little that could keep his son away from him now.
"I....am part of the Italian mafia."
Oh.
"Actually," Giorno continued, "I intend to be the boss, the don of the Italian mafia."
"Um....why?"
Giorno leaned in with an impassioned glint in his eyes.
"Well, you see...."